Church in Corona times

The Church is a community of people in love with creation and God. God had called this assembly to be a called-out community so as to live a life that does not conform to the standards that the world sets but to live a life worthy of the calling to be in union with God as God is with creation.

Today the world facing a pandemic in the form of the COVID-19, the churches remain closed, people distancing themselves from others, while many others quarantined, giving a distorted look of creation especially humanity that was not meant to be this way. The Church has long lived for centuries now and it has always been dynamic and never static. The contexts keep the Church moving and evolving. But in the process of evolving the church got stuck with somewhere making itself comfortable being static. This had caused the church to practice social distancing and quarantining even before the world spoke of it due to the Corona Virus pandemic.

The Church’s Overcoming Quarantine to Embrace and to Serve

The Church in its own prerogative remained in a state of self-imposed quarantining to keep secure its doctrines, belief-systems, people and also its accumulated wealth. This has caused the church not only to become irreal to the people’s experiences but also made sure it created a wall around to keep the many away from the church. From building stairs, symbolically keep the wheel-chairs away; tabooing cultural practices, keeping cultural elements alienated from worship; criminalizing people, closing doors to the very people the Church was to be a part of; and so on, it isolated itself. Today, with the people, the members of the One body suffering, the church is called to live amidst the people it was meant to serve and not remain in isolation. As Matthew 25:35 onward speaks of church among the people, it needs to redefine its role in the society. Open the doors for the homeless, bring down the walls of discrimination, embracing those in isolation through prayers, meeting their needs, have to be the core of the gospel of the church which Jesus preaches in Matt 25:34-36.

The Church: Socially Dstanced yet Active and Politically Present

When I say the church practiced social distancing it does not mean with reference to what is understood today because of the pandemic, but in being absent from the society and its people. Even today the many churches preach only of a salvation for the soul overshadowing life’s realities of the people, making it irrelevant to the struggles of the people. The Church has been invisible in its political dialogue for better provisions for the people and being in solidarity with the communities in struggle. The Church also went further in imposing a ‘Christian’ culture on people killing local cultures that had already existed. Thus, the church was engulfed with the way in which it approached the people, imposing a theology from above and never gave space for a theology from below. But this pandemic is a reminder for the church to move from such a social-distancing and respond to creation’s cry for liberation.

Today when humanity is struggling to overcome this COVID-19, God calls us to distance ourselves from each other only physically. Always remember, that the church was never the building of the institution but we the members of the one body into whom we are baptized. Therefore, we the members, ought to be inquisitive in suffering, remain politically present and socially active, because the Church existed, the Church is present, but in our core be hospitable to those in need. And this way, the Church will remain and sustain until the coming of our lord.

May this phase of uncertainty, be for us signs of hope and renewal of life that God sustains. Amen